Guide and Mars graze
Roger Curry Jul 20, 2003
Hi, Bill,
I was very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time on
Thursday morning. I had read about the upcoming Mars graze several
months ago decided to try to get the time off to observe it.
I live in Jacksonville, about 150 miles north of the graze zone and
weather has been terrible here (at least observing-wise) for what seems
like weeks on end. I gave myself little chance of observing anything,
but the time off was okayed and I made the trip, first from Jacksonville
to Key Biscayne (Miami area) to visit with a good friend and observing
companion. For a couple of days we worked on astro and computer
projects and then we drove north in separate cars to Sebastian, FL,
where we had hotel reservations.
It just happens that there is a state park on the east side of the
Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) with minimal lighting and open 24 hours a
day. We scouted out the location and were completely satisfied. Most
amazing of all, the sky started clearing. Two of my friends from the
club drove down to join us that evening and at 2 a.m., we headed the 8
miles from the hotel to the park and set up.
Seeing the graze was a great experience, one of the highlights of my
observing career. The sky remained observable for all but a few brief
periods when scuttering clouds occulted the occulting pair, but I was
able to record nearly 13 MINUTES of graze with a PC23C surveillance
camera at prime focus x2 (with Barlow) of a 6-inch f/8 Discovery Dob on
an equatorial platform.
The simulation using Guide was dead on. I even made an AVI at about 6x
speed of the simulation.
Until last night, I had not thought about using the "Find Eclipse"
function of Guide to view the graze line, but it worked great, and we
were almost dead center on the graze line.
I knew that such events were fairly rare and I used the "previous" and
"next" feature to find the last Mars graze at night that was within a
few hours travel distance from my home. It turns out that it was back
in September of 1892 (from memory) and the next is about 20 years away.
Guide is elegant and powerful. You have a lot of free advertising
around here! Thanks for all of the work that you did to make a great
program and continue to improve it; you have done a great service to the
observing community.
One question: I remember it being talked about but could not find where
it has been implemented--is there a way to select your location on Earth
using the "Show Eclipse" map and then select that location as your
observing site in the Settings/Location menu? Sure would beat copying a
lot of lat/lon numbers!
Kudos!
Roger
Roger Curry
Jacksonville, FL
Visit the Northeast Florida Astronomical Society website at
www.nefas.org